Qiang Zhang, Limei Wu, Yue Zhang, Dan Wang, Yingyu Sima, Zhimin Wang, Zhiwei Yin, Hui Wu, Yuting Zhuo, Yutong Zhang, Linlin Wang, Yong Chen, Yanlan Liu, Liping Qiu, Weihong Tan
Innovating the design of chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) beyond conventional structures would be necessary to address the challenges of efficacy, safety, and applicability in T cell-based cancer therapy, whereas excessive genetic modification might complicate CAR design and manufacturing, and increase gene editing risks. In this work, we used aptamers as the antigen-recognition unit to develop a nongenetic CAR engineering strategy for programming the antitumor activity and specificity of CAR T cells. Our results demonstrated that aptamer-functionalized CAR (Apt-CAR) T cells could be directly activated by recognizing target antigens on cancer cells, and then impart a cytotoxic effect for cancer elimination in vitro and in vivo...
April 24, 2024: ACS Central Science